For thousands of years, the Indians of Florida created exquisite objects from the natural materials available to them - wood, bone, stone, clay, and shell. This stunning full-color book, the first devoted exclusively to the artistic achievements of the Florida aborigines, describes and pictures 116 of these masterpieces. A brief history of the consequences of European infiltration and later investigations by explorers and archaeologists sets the stage for consideration of the works themselves. They date from the Paleoindian period (ca. 9500-8000 B.C.) to the mid-sixteenth century and include utilitarian creations, instruments of personal adornment and magic, and objects indicating status, paying homage to ancestors, or aiding the dead in their journey into the next world.

The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book. The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world's artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories.

Florida's Colonial Architectural Heritage is the story of how buildings were planned and constructed in Florida from 1565 to 1821, the 256 years that the colony was ruled by Spain and England. From indigenous Native American dwellings through Spanish/Indian, Spanish, and British architecture, Gordon traces the styles, materials, uses, and context of almost every building recorded or standing during this period.

Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the role in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature.

Years in the making, this elegant and far-ranging volume has helped establish the ever-growing passion for American Impressionism and remains the most invaluable source of information on the subject. Called the best book ever written on the subject by Artforum, it includes reproductions of all the masterworks. 400 illustrations, 200 in color.

Klinkowitz presents a critical biography driven by the architect's own work and intellectual growth, focusing on the evolution of Wright's thinking and writings from his first public addresses in 1894 to his last essay in 1959. Did Wright reject all of Victorian thinking about the home, or do his attentions to a minister's sermon on "the house beautiful" deserve closer attention? Was Wright echoing the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, or was he more in step with the philosophy of William James? Did he reject the Arts and Crafts movement, or repurpose its beliefs and practices for new times? And, what can be said of his deep dissatisfaction with architectural concepts of his own era, the dominant modernism that became the International Style? Even the strongest advocates of Frank Lloyd Wright have been puzzled by his objections to so much that characterized the twentieth century, from ideas for building to styles of living.

The story behind the 1913 Armory Show, the most important art exhibit in U.S. history. Held a century ago, in the winter of 1913, the show brought Modernism to America in an unprecedented display of 1300 works by artists including Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp. Drawing from primary sources and setting the Armory Show into the context of American culture just before World War I, the book brings the exhibition and its era to vivid life.

Is There Anyone who has not seen the sturdy Iowa farmer with his pitchfork and his thin-lipped wife or daughter? Ever since it met the public eye in 1930, the work titled American Gothic has elicited admiration, disgust, reverence, and ridicule--and has been reproduced hundreds of thousands of times, in every medium. Painted by a self-proclaimed "bohemian" who studied in Paris, the image was first seen as a critique of Midwestern Puritanism and what H. L. Mencken called "the booboisie." During the Depression, it came to represent endurance in hard times through the quintessential American values of thrift, work, and faith. Later, in television, advertising, politics, and popular culture, American Gothic evolved into parody--all the while remaining a lodestar by which one might measure closeness to or distance from the American heartland. With broad perspective, acute insight, and humor, Steven Biel explores the strangely enduring life of America's most popular painting

A tragic icon of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) took influences from Picasso and Mexican surrealism and developed his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing. Though his name inevitably conjures up images of the drip paintings for which he is most famous, this technique was only developed midway through his career. The progression from his earlier work to his final "action" paintings --a veritable revolution of painting as a concept--reveals the genius of this tortured artist whom many call the greatest modern American painter.

Blondes, beds, and black-and-white works sum up this selection of Roy Lichtensteins series, based on an exhibition mounted at Viennas famous Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2005. This substantial catalogue contains 80 essential color reproductions, some in high-quality foldouts, under three thematic groupings: early black-and-white works of the 60s; the woman as motif in his paintings from the 60s, 70s, and 80s; and his interiors, especially those from the 90s. Leading scholars in the field, including Michael Lobel and Avis Berman, newly illuminate the Pop masters oeuvre in the context of this juxtaposition of early and late periods. Also included are studio photographs, some of which have never been published before, and finally, a biography and bibliography related specifically to the exhibition themes.

From Neal Gabler, the definitive portrait of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American entertainment and cultural history. Seven years in the making and meticulously researched—Gabler is the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives—this is the full story of a man whose work left an ineradicable brand on our culture but whose life has largely been enshrouded in myth. Gabler shows us the young Walt Disney breaking free of a heartland childhood of discipline and deprivation and making his way to Hollywood. We see the visionary, whose desire for escape honed an innate sense of what people wanted to see on the screen and, when combined with iron determination and obsessive perfectionism, led him to the reinvention of animation.

Twenty-five of the most outstanding African American women artists have contributed their work to the exhibition "Bearing Witness," celebrating the opening of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and the 115th anniversary of the college. Works in all mediums are included here - paintings, sculptures, fiber art, mixed mediums, and prints - created by some of today's most exceptional artists, among them Lorna Simpson, Faith Ringgold, Carrie Mae Weems, and Betye Saar.

Exploring three major hubs of muralist activity in California, where indigenist imagery is prevalent, Walls of Empowerment celebrates an aesthetic that seeks to firmly establish Chicana/o sociopolitical identity in U.S. territory. Providing readers with a history and genealogy of key muralists' productions, Guisela Latorre also showcases new material and original research on works and artists never before examined in print.

Eighteen essays of art criticism cover early American portraiture and landscape painting, late-nineteenth-century masters Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, and the work of such artists as James McNeill Whistler and Alfred Stieglitz.

Presenting the most up-to-date coverage on our knowledge of this society, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures is the first comprehensive and comparative reference source to chronicle Pre-Hispanic, Colonial, and modern Mesoamerica. Organized alphabetically, the articles range from 500-word biographies to 7,000-word entries on geography and history to the legacy of the arts, writings, architecture, and religious rituals.

Ancient Nasca culture of the south coast of Peru is famous for its magnificent polychrome ceramics, textiles, and other works of art, as well as the enigmatic ground markings on the desert plain at Nasca. In the past two decades much has become known about the people who produced these fascinating works. This scholarly yet accessible book provides a penetrating examination of this important civilization. It traces the history of archaeological research on the south coast and reveals the misconceptions that became canonized in the scholarly literature. Based on years of fieldwork by the authors in the region, it provides a comprehensive and readable analysis of ancient Nasca society, examining Nasca social and political organization, religion, and art.

Kelly Donahue-Wallace surveys the art and architecture created in the Spanish Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata from the time of the conquest to the independence era. Emphasizing the viceregal capitals and their social, economic, religious, and political contexts, the author offers a chronological review of the major objects and monuments of the colonial era.

By the leading expert on Frida Kahlo, a lavishly illustrated and sumptuously produced visual record of her haunting and powerful paintings. Four-color illustrations printed in Italy on special stock are accompanied by an authoritative text that helps explain both the woman and her work.

Approaching the Cafeteros' art from a cultural studies perspective, O'Reilly Herrera examines how the history of Cuba informs their work and establishes their connections to past generations of Cuban artists. In interviews with more than thirty artists, including José Bedia, María Brito, Leandro Soto, Glexis Novoa, Baruj Salinas, and Ana Albertina Delgado, O'Reilly Herrera also raises critical questions regarding the many and sometimes paradoxical ways diasporic subjects self-affiliate or situate themselves in the narratives of scattering and displacement. She demonstrates how the Cafeteros' artmaking involves a process of re-rooting, absorption, translation, and synthesis that simultaneously conserves a series of identifiable Cuban cultural elements while re-inscribing and transforming them in new contexts. An important contribution to both diasporic and transnational studies and discussions of contemporary Cuban art, Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora ultimately testifies to the fact that a long tradition of Cuban art is indeed flourishing outside the island.

Full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of peer-selected publications covering world art, now including coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and other non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.

Contains the entire text of The Dictionary of Art (34 volumes, covering all aspects of the visual arts of every civilization from prehistory to the 1990s) with annual additions of new material and updates to the text, plus extensive image links.

In this three-part series, art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon journeys across America to explore themes and styles in American art from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Beginning with the early Puritans, he examines a persistent paradox in American history—an ideology rooted in God and nature, but a reality seeped in blood and the destruction of the natural world. Next up is the rise of mechanization, modernism, and Abstract Expressionism, and then Graham-Dixon takes a look at the age of capitalism and beyond, including Pop Art, a return to pantheism, and the “filthy money” versus “pure art” divide. 3-part series, 50 minutes each.

This classic six-part series, which aired on PBS during the nation’s bicentennial, examines the careers of some of the most talented Native American artists of the Southwest as they were unfolding at that time. The many examples of their work, combined with intimate glimpses of Indian cultures, make each program a valuable time capsule of an era when Native American art first began to attract the attention of the mainstream modern art community both in the U.S. and around the world. Rod McKuen narrates. 6-part series, 29 minutes each.

This program follows the magnificent museum exhibition that travels across 33 centuries of Mexican art, from the 12th- to 10th-century B.C. gigantic Olmec heads to Frida Kahlo's self-portrait. The exhibition is divided into four periods: the pre-columbian, whose artistic purpose was to venerate the gods, commemorate the rulers, and give form to the natural world; the Viceregal, whose art was intended to teach the native population about Christianity and turn them into loyal and productive servants of Spain; the 19th century, with its Mexican adaptation of European Romanticism and Naturalism; and the 20th century, with its themes of revolution and pride in Mexico's Indian heritage. The artistic voyage, which covers a range of ages and peoples, beliefs and styles, is united by the strong prevailing sense of Mexican identity and place. (28 minutes)

This beautifully filmed program looks at the wall paintings of some of the most famous Mexican muralists—Diego Rivera, Juan O’Gorman, José Clemente Orozco—and at the work of Luis Barragán, one of the greatest Mexican architects of the 20th century. Their common medium is the wall. The muralists sought to return art to the people, by putting it on the walls of public buildings, just as it had been in the days of their Mayan forefathers. Barragán embraced a modernism imported from Europe, but developed a style that echoes with memories of ancient times. Both the muralists and Barragán used the wall to create something distinctively new and vital, but they all found their guiding force in the roots of Mexican art and culture, in traditions grounded in the pre-Columbian era. (56 minutes)